


Love or Mercy

by aderyn



Series: Compounds or Stars [17]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221b, ASiB, ASiP, Gen, TRF, knowing where to look
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-04
Updated: 2012-03-04
Packaged: 2017-11-01 02:28:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Mercy is not at all the same thing as pity, his least favorite lens, the one Donovan looked at him through at a crime scene in Brixton, the very first."</p>
<p>We think we can't have both, but we can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love or Mercy

**Author's Note:**

> Title inspired by Brian Wilson’s “Love and Mercy”

_“...if only  
we could let go  
like her, throw ourselves  
on the mercy of darkness, like the hen,  
tuck our head  
under a wing...”—Galway Kinnell, “The Hen Flower” _

  
  
Mercy is not at all the same thing as pity, his least favorite lens, the one Donovan looked at him through at a crime scene in Brixton, the very first.  
  
Pity is not what Stamford took on him when he brought John to Bart’s and he stood at what might have been attention, once, while Sherlock's pitiless gaze laid bare what might have mattered to him had he not been staring down the blue-eyed barrel of a new life.

Some would argue that being sent home from a war zone was a mercy, and in a way, it was.

***  
  
“I've never begged for mercy in my life,” Sherlock said, and close by a voice answered, _oh, but you will._ Because no paralytic, no stimulant, no anodyne in the world can protect you from assaults on organs you don't think you have.

You'll know where to look then, won't you?    
  
You'll stand on a ledge with the rays in your eyes and beg for a moment, twice; you will.  
  
***  
  
It's a mercy that you're only drugged, not dead, only bruised, not beaten, that you were allowed, for a moment, the anodyne of joy.  
  
To answer a question long after it's been asked isn't cheating; it's listening. ( _What might we deduce about his heart?)  
_  
It's a crime, not saying what we believe.


End file.
